A blowout of a conventional vehicle tire at high speed can cause a vehicle to go out of control and cause injury or death. If an immediate accident is avoided, a punctured tire may strand the operator on a highway or other unsafe place.
In order to minimize the dangers in the event of a tire blowout or other accidental deflation of a tire; various proposals have been made to prevent complete tire deflation and to provide the operator with additional vehicle control during the blowout.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,293,017 discloses a dual chamber tire with an air inlet valve in the rim for an inner chamber and a second air inlet valve in the rim for the outer chamber.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,122,740 discloses a tube within a tube with both tubes being filled with air through a single stem carrying two valves.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,025,902 discloses a dual chamber tubeless tire with an inner chamber inflated by a rim valve and an outer chamber inflated by a valve in the outer tire sidewall. In this device, if the outer chamber is inflated first, the inner diaphragm could be pressed inwardly to the rim to an unsafe position. Furthermore, if the rim valve developed a slow air leak, the tire could separate from the rim while the outer tire remained fully inflated and appeared to be safe to drive on.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,871,904 discloses a dual chamber tubeless tire in which an inner chamber is inflated by a ri-m valve and an outer chamber is inflated along with the inner chamber via a first one way valve in the inner diaphragm. A second one way valve in the diaphragm permits air flow in the opposite direction, from the outer chamber to the inner chamber. In this tire, the vehicle operator cannot inflate, gauge or deflate the outer chamber directly. Also, the operator cannot verify that the one way valves are working correctly or wheather the inner diaphragm can sustain the vehicle load if the outer tire is punctured and loses its air pressure. Such faults might make a tire manufacturer responsible for the safe and correct wear of outer tire treads and for potentially unsafe conditions upon installation of the tire. Applicant theorizes that such concerns have kept such tires out of the market.